Chemistry research that led to an Ig Nobel Prize has now led to an onion that does not cause tears, reportedly. The Wall Street Journal‘s JapanRealtime blog reports:

No Crying in the Kitchen: Japan Firm Engineers Tear-Less Onions

House Foods Group Inc. knows its onions.

The Japanese food maker, whose researchers have been studying the chemistry of onions for more than a decade, on Monday said it has developed onions that produce an extremely low amount of enzymes which creates compounds that make so many cooks tear up when chopping the vegetables raw….

This video shows how a mechanical “bounce test” can reveal how much electrical charge remains in an ordinary alkaline AA battery:

Chemistry World magazine explains: “Inspired by a YouTube video, scientists in the US have confirmed that a simple bounce test can be used as a technique to indicate charge in a battery… A team led by Daniel Steingart [pictured here] of Princeton University have correlated the coefficient of restitution (COR), a measure of bounce, with batteries at various charges and determined their charge to a similar degree of accuracy as in situ energy-dispersive x-ray diffraction (EDXRD).”